You BET it does! In November 2007, the United States Department of Justice released a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics entitled, "Pretrial Release of Felony Defendants in State Courts". The Department of Justice study confirms that of all defendants released through some type of pretrial program, twenty-eight percent (28%) failed to appear in court. Only nineteen percent (19%) of defendants released on surety bond failed to appear, compared to thirty percent (30%) released on some sort of unsecured bond. After a year, only three percent (3%) of defendants released on SURETY BOND were fugitives, compared to ten percent (10%) of those released on unsecured bond.

In addition to the federal study, conducted by a 'disinterested third party', an important private study has also been conducted. Entitled "Public versus Private Law Enforcement: Evidence from Bail Jumping,"/, /Dr. Eric Helland and Dr. Alexander Tabarrok, compared the failure to appear and fugitive rates of felony defendants released from custody under 'own recognizance', clerk/court deposit bond, cash bond, surety bond and emergency release using data sets compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice's B.O.J. The study spanned an eight year period, the results of which prove that defendants released on surety bond are far more likely to appear in court AND are less likely to remain fugitives than defendants released on their own recognizance, deposit band, cash bond, or emergency release. The authors state, "[d]efendants released on surety bond are twenty-eight percent (28%) less likely to fail to appear than similar defendants released on their own recognizance and if they do fail to appear, they are fifty three percent (53%) less likely to remain at large for extended period of time." The authors also compare surety bond releases to cash bond releases, nothing that "[r]equiring defendants to pay their bonds in cash can reduce the 'FTA' rate to a similar rate than that for those released on surety bond. Given that a defendant skips town however, the probability of recapture is much higher for those defendants on surety bond. As a result the probability of remaining a fugitive is sixty four percent (64%) lower for defendants released on surety bonds, compared to those release on cash bonds.